that's an incoherent take. The natural laws of animal instinct are inherently deterministic and oppressive. Fight or flight. The strongest survive. Concepts like fairness, magnaminity, and restraint in the interest of justice are unknown. There's no international agreement among cats to refrain from eating endangered bird species, for instance. (The fact that human laws against killing endangered species have often been disregarded does not override the fact that the ordinances have also had some partial success- or the fact that no animal species other than humans is even capable of formulating a concept as subtle as preserving natural diversity at the expense of immediate gratification.)
To the extent that human laws reify oppression or lead to oppression, it's because some of them are formulated and/or selectively enforced for the purpose of the oppression of the weak by the strong, to prevent the threat of competition, for territory or survival, and/or to maximize the advantage of a few at the expense of the rest, in a zero-sum game. That's as "natural" as it gets. A squandering of the unique capacity of reflective human awareness to do any better, but there isn't anything per se "unnatural" about it.
"The societies that have rules that don't oppress are not following human rules."
Got any specific real-world examples to reference? Your statement is so vague that I can't even tell whether you're referring to human societies or nonhuman societies.
I'm sufficiently familiar with Huron-Iroquois territorial conflicts, the pre-contact history of intertribal rivalries of the Plains tribes of North America, the rise and fall of the Mayan Empire that occurred centuries before European contact ("Chiapas" is a region in Mexico; the indigenous people who live there have historically been Mayan subgroups) and the 20th century militarist regime of Imperial Japan (a hereditary monarchy!), to know that you're a romantic fantasizer.
But I'm curious as to where you got such fatuous ideas. Got any scholarly reference support for them?
I don't understand what you are talking about. First you said that rules and laws exist solely for the oppression of lower castes and then you said only nature makes the rules. So you think nature makes oppressive rules? There are rules for reaching consensus. As far as I know they are human rules. They are not oppressive unless you are one of those people that likes to take up all the space.
YOU were talking about the difference between human law and natural law. I never said a word about it before you brought it up. I was talking about who makes the laws for people and how it could be different if it were not the elite making those laws.
Rules and laws made by the oppressors are made to control those they oppress. If rules and laws were made by the people, things might be different.
that's an incoherent take. The natural laws of animal instinct are inherently deterministic and oppressive. Fight or flight. The strongest survive. Concepts like fairness, magnaminity, and restraint in the interest of justice are unknown. There's no international agreement among cats to refrain from eating endangered bird species, for instance. (The fact that human laws against killing endangered species have often been disregarded does not override the fact that the ordinances have also had some partial success- or the fact that no animal species other than humans is even capable of formulating a concept as subtle as preserving natural diversity at the expense of immediate gratification.)
To the extent that human laws reify oppression or lead to oppression, it's because some of them are formulated and/or selectively enforced for the purpose of the oppression of the weak by the strong, to prevent the threat of competition, for territory or survival, and/or to maximize the advantage of a few at the expense of the rest, in a zero-sum game. That's as "natural" as it gets. A squandering of the unique capacity of reflective human awareness to do any better, but there isn't anything per se "unnatural" about it.
Well said DC Reade!
"The societies that have rules that don't oppress are not following human rules."
Got any specific real-world examples to reference? Your statement is so vague that I can't even tell whether you're referring to human societies or nonhuman societies.
I'm sufficiently familiar with Huron-Iroquois territorial conflicts, the pre-contact history of intertribal rivalries of the Plains tribes of North America, the rise and fall of the Mayan Empire that occurred centuries before European contact ("Chiapas" is a region in Mexico; the indigenous people who live there have historically been Mayan subgroups) and the 20th century militarist regime of Imperial Japan (a hereditary monarchy!), to know that you're a romantic fantasizer.
But I'm curious as to where you got such fatuous ideas. Got any scholarly reference support for them?
I don't understand what you are talking about. First you said that rules and laws exist solely for the oppression of lower castes and then you said only nature makes the rules. So you think nature makes oppressive rules? There are rules for reaching consensus. As far as I know they are human rules. They are not oppressive unless you are one of those people that likes to take up all the space.
YOU were talking about the difference between human law and natural law. I never said a word about it before you brought it up. I was talking about who makes the laws for people and how it could be different if it were not the elite making those laws.